The Source, which will be based in New York and is slated to debut Monday, July 10, at 9 p.m. ET, is a new hour built around up-and-coming anchor Kaitlan Collins, who has, in the space of just a few years, vaulted from White House correspondent to morning co-anchor to primetime personality. Collins has been leading CNN’s 9 p.m. hour over the past few weeks, but under a catch-all rubric of CNN Primetime, which also encompassed town-hall specials and deep-dive interviews with newsmakers led by others.
Collins will begin regularly hosting the 9 p.m. Eastern show next month, the network said Wednesday, making the announcement during a Warner Discovery sales presentation to advertisers. The ex-White House correspondent moderated CNN’s town hall with former President Donald Trump last week, but was generally held blameless for criticism the event received.
Trump, returning to the network after years of acrimony, also refused to say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war against Russian aggression and said the U.S. “might as well” default on its debt obligation, despite the potentially devastating economic consequences. The live, televised event — held in early-voting New Hampshire — underscored the challenges of fact-checking Trump in real time. The former president was cheered on and applauded by an audience of Republican and unaffiliated voters who plan to vote in the GOP primary, as moderator Kaitlan Collins sometimes struggled to correct the record as Trump steamrolled with untrue statements. “You are a nasty person,” he snapped at one point.
Both sides of the political divide expressed suspicion when the CNN forum at New Hampshire’s St. Anselm College was announced last week. Some Democrats question whether the former president should be given the airtime, while Republicans wonder if a network Trump has long disparaged can be fair. Once it begins, moderator Kaitlan Collins of CNN must give audience members the chance to ask questions while determining when to step in with her own. She’ll weigh how to correct misinformation in a potentially hostile environment: Invited town hall participants are those who expect to vote in a Republican primary.